UGG

“He came back with about a 150 business cards of all these retailers, and not a single order, and said, Brian, they tell us we're crazy trying to sell sheepskin in California.”

“We were able to raise 20,000 dollars from them as capital, and we didn't even have a business plan.”

“The total sales for the first year was 28 pairs.”

“That was one of the worst facets of the entire UGG project for 20 years, was the lack of margins I had because the pressure of the retail price kept us way, way down, so it was very hard to make money.”

“And I did a search of the world, especially the US, to see if there'd been any prior use of the trade name Ugg, and they had not. So, That opened up the gate for me to do the registration of the trademark.”

“It was generic down there, yeah.”

“The ski market was even harder than the surf market. Because their attitude was, well, we have mud, and we have slush, and we need rubber, you know, we gotta have Sorrells, and they couldn't see sheepskin being strong enough or waterproof enough to work in the…”

“I learned early on that trying to walk into a surf shop with sheepskin boots on a hot day was like pointless. So I learned to wait for a really shitty day when, you know, the storm would hit, you know, then I'd go on the road and sales were, you know, I would …”

“So when I ran those ads, the sales, which had been around, you know, 30 to 50,000 per year, the immediate jump was like 200,000 dollars.”

“The more sales you get, the bigger your problems get in, in supply. I never really understood that. I, my accounting thinking was, we just sold a million dollars worth of product, we're broke. What's the answer? Oh, we'll sell two million next year and think w…”

“No, you don't get your stock issued until you finish the trademark. And I just hung the phone up, and I drove from Huntington Beach straight back to San Diego, and I pulled out my contract, and I read it, and I reread it, and I just went, oh, shit. I don't own…”

“I think that was the fifth or sixth year. That was the first money I'd ever taken out of the company.”

“By being out there with the customers, it was so much easier for me to, you know, get a rapport going and introduce the product by having them try the boots on. Now, that turned out to be the biggest factor in closing our first orders was having the buyer try …”

“That cost me a pair of boots for each new store I opened, but that changed the trajectory of Ugg forever, and it was probably the best marketing plan I ever executed on.”

“Between the time he called me to get my stock, and that was the very next Sunday, he had a heart attack in this race and never recovered. And so, now his widow, who'd never stepped forward, Foot inside the Ugg business, now owned 100% of Ugg.”

“Black and charcoal were just kicking butt with all of their orders. And we were, you know, getting two or 3000 pairs of orders a week.”

“We ended up getting 200,000 dollars as a settlement to walk away... And so I signed a promissory note with her, and this 200,000 dollars was enough to pay her note out, And then by, you know, I owned the company 100% again.”

“By the end of that year, for the first time ever, UGG turns a profit, 140,000 dollars, which is great news.”

“We ended up doing a deal where we purchased the UGHS company, and we maintained that factory for a couple of years.”

“I found a mailing list of stylists in Hollywood and sent a letter to them, and about 400 people responded, and so I sent them all a pair of Ugg boots, you know, no questions asked, and it was a couple of months before I started seeing them on Celebrities”

“You know, we'd spent years building up this image of casual comfort and fashion and everything, and so I really fought it, but I was outvoted at a board meeting.”

“Today we have a new sponsor, and it's Ugg Boots from California, and that second, our switchboard shut down, because every broker in the country, every stockbroker, was calling us saying, Are you guys public? Can we buy stock? Can we buy, you know, because the…”

“If we had announced that Oprah was wearing our shoes or boots, it would have killed the company when I owned the company, because I didn't have the capital to build the product to take on that demand.”

“We got in a lot of trouble back in the days with UGG because we just sold our basic product to everybody and just let them do what they wanted with it. And that worked for a while, but then it really hurt the brand.”

“At that time, yes. Oh yeah. I mean, they were chasing business. It was a freight strain, and they were just trying to keep up for a good five years.”

“And so we've been able to tap into those two insights to build what we are now, a two billion dollar plus brand.”

“And we lost the specialness of the brand, and it took us five years in the UK and Europe to get that back.”

“We told the street we're going to pull back on revenue growth, but we're going to improve our profit profile.”

“We had a lot of turnover at that time, which I think, you know, was probably the right thing to do. Definitely the right thing to do.”

“Traditionally, it would buy one boot every two and a half years, right? The classic boot. And now we have people buying two or three times a year because they're buying different products.”

“Initial margin is Hoka. But UGG is a close second. I mean, they're both very, very healthy in the industry.”

“When we used to sell UGG Once every two or three years, a 160 dollar price point. Now we're selling Hoka two to three times a year at a 160 dollars set price point.”

“You know, what myself and the finance leaders at the time did in 16 and 17 would say, actually, no, you don't all need that money. These two things need that money. And we're going to reset. That was the biggest reallocation success that we had.”